February 27, 2016

Bernie Sanders’ stay at a Stalinist kibbutz — Consistent with Sanders’ honeymoon visit to the Soviet Union (where, Rand Paul quipped, he stayed), his visit to Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega, and his 1980s visit to Cuba where he met with the mayor of Havana. So far as I know, Bernie Sanders has never repudiated his Stalinist inclinations

February 5, 2016Bernie Sanders’s 1963 stay at a Stalinist kibbutz
By Thomas Lifson

Kibbutz Sha’ar Ha’amakim was, in fact, part of the communist organizational support system, dedicated to the triumph of communism under the leadership of the Soviet Union.

Its founder, Ya’akov Hazan, described the USSR as a second homeland and eulogized Stalin, writing how shocked he and his comrades were, “to hear of the terrible tragedy that has befallen the nations of the Soviet Union, the world proletariat and all of progressive mankind, upon the death of the great leader and extolled commander, Josef Vissarionovich Stalin. We lower our flag in grief in memory of the great revolutionary fighter, architect of socialist construction, and leader of the world’s peace movement. His huge historical achievements will guide generations in their march towards the reign of socialism and communism the world over.”

Al Hamishmar, the movement’s paper, had a headline which read, “The Progressive World Mourns the Death of J.V. Stalin”

This sojourn in Israeli communist kibbutz is fully consistent with Sanders’s honeymoon visit to the Soviet Union (where, Rand Paul quipped, he stayed), his visit to Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega as the first U.S. elected official when he became the mayor of Burlington, and his 1980s visit to Cuba where he met with the mayor of Havana.

So far as I know, Bernie Sanders has never repudiated his Stalinist inclinations.